Conquest: The Prequel AU
by FireBlossum
Summary: After the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse slaughtered their own kind,they faced exile from their world to the Third Kingdom until called.Centuries later,these chapters separately follow a fighter,an sovereign,a thief and a killer at different places and times. Gaining human attributes in their eternal battle for survival in a world they are bound to destroy.(Blood/Wording)


The Thief CH. 1

South Bronx, New York. 1997

"Mother fuckin,' goddamn Patriots!" A convenience store clerk barked to a shoddy, scratched and dented surveillance television weighing down his stain sputtered counter. He whipped his hand across the monitor, inflicting another dent across the edge and nearly imprinted the back of his hand into the side. "That's the fuckin' second time this year they've gotten into the semi-finals and it's all 'cause of that damned quarterback!"

"Ah, don't lower your hopes, Ty." A pale and worn man called from the far corner of the convenience store. His face was slightly aged by hardship. Tightly grasping the last shred of his youth in his unusually golden eyes. Though slightly glazed with drunken intemperance, they were as bright as the store's flickering sign outside in the frostbitten winter rain. He smiled kindly as his ragged, fingerless gloves rummaged through the cases of cheap Budweiser in all different shapes and sizes. "Jets'll get 'em next year."

"Yeah, and when'll that be? Next year, or will it be in the next five. . ?" The clerk, Ty, chuckled coldly at the false hope given from a known customer whose plastered confidence was far too known to him. As always, he knew far too well in their short time to ignore it. "How do you know we won't be rotting in our graves when they get back on their two left feet?"

"You'd think that I could." The drunk shrugged, fisting a frosty case with outlandish easiness out of the back of the fridge with his one hand. He put up an upward stance. His other palm, clenching a half-guzzled beer bottle, pointed slowly to the ceiling, but his eyes dared not follow in the same direction. "But not even the angels above us can." He said with a strange, superficial and all-knowing certainty in his smile. For a moment, the clerk glared at him with a nearly avid curiosity. But it was more out of guessing how many points he was over the drinking limit rather than what the drunk actually knew.

"Enough of that, you lousy sod." Ty grumbled, dismissing the drunk with his hand and lifted his legs to put his feet up onto the counter. "Don't come up to me with that religious talk Mr. . ."

"Call me Mr. Quarrel." The outwardly homeless man grinned, pretending not to hear the remark.

"Quarrel?" The clerk asked quizzically. "What kind of last name's that?"

"French." Quarrel said flatter than the beer strangled around his gloves. He tipped the dirty emerald glass over his chapped lips centered between a prickly and ashen black five 'o clock shadow. He downed the last gulp and savored the soft warmth that swam down his chest and swirled into his stomach.

"French or not, Quarrel," The wiry bearded clerk said indifferently as he inflicted a kick to the side of the physically abused security screen. "I don't usually allow deadbeats like you into my store."

With that grimaced, another customer passed into the shop. A small boy in a large jacket with too many pockets and old cargo pants a few sizes over his. He wandered tensely between the sliding doors. He jumped, slightly startled by the automated two-note bell ring upon entering. Ty didn't pay much mind to the child's behavior, he was too busy focusing on the familiar drunk that always stumbled into his store every other night. Purchasing cheap liquor for the past week and a half. Then his surveillance T.V. caught his attention once again. Quarrel only knew that it had something to do with some linebacker breaking his leg or something along those lines. All he really knew, mostly what he came for, is that he himself had an opening. A time to reap what he needed.

Quarrel, as other store owners around had known, had a reputation of owning rather, "sticky fingers." Having been known to pluck rather expensive and illustrious items from an allotted amount of stores.

Of course, he had money, once. He had pulled a rather large steal. The retired robber's mind still recalled pulling two glocks on an old woman who looked to be at the brink of - One he would not be concerned to name. Her wiry and white hair, sagging skin and jagged, purple veins pulsing in her raised palms.

Even though he was chased for days, he lived every thief's wet dream. Having the perfect escape from driving at one hundred and thirty miles per hour to anywhere. Scott-free with one hundred and forty-nine thousand, two hundred and eighty dollars stuffed into the foot of the passenger seat.

But all good things come at a price in the karma-ridden world known as Earth. It's tall fee befalling a whimpering and harsh end, as his prize did shortly after. Leading to a small, rancid, runaway named Mr. Quarrel. Persuading _yet another_ clerk why he shouldn't be kicked out of _yet another_ store and back into the urban tundra. The snow and rain sheeting his getaway car outside by the hands.

"Oh, come now, Ty!" The drunk whined as he began to circle the store. Winding in and out of the aisles, grabbing a couple bags of chips as he continued, "It's straight freezing rain out there!" He merged to another aisle, checking the clerk with the corner of his eye. His senses were glued to the screen, ignoring his plea. Perfect, the robber thought.

He plucked a carton of Q -tips along with some Benadryl and pushed them deep into his the pants pockets shrouded under his puffed jacket. A pair of teal cotton earbuds snuggled deep into a manure brown boot and a bottle of cough medicine in a spattered grey high-top. Not that he was one to get sick, but a high or two did some temporary wonders. Quarrel spoke up some more. "You want a guy like me frozen right outside of your store?" A blow up pillow into his chest, batteries in his sleeve, even a Star Wars D.V.D. box set out of the package and into the thin slits of the beer case's cover.

"Wouldn't mind." Ty grumbled as his focus remained elsewhere.

"Just cause-" Quarrel stopped abruptly, catching a loud crinkling of thin aluminum west of his hearing. The vagrant twisted his head to his left and caught as small, pink hand scuffed with dirt. Latching grime lined fingernails onto a bag of baby blue potato chips. The boy from earlier stuffing the snack deep into his pockets. Quarrel watched as he grabbed another with just as abrupt noise.

_"Hey." _Mr. Quarrel whispered to the next aisle over. There was a loud pop, the bag exploded in the sudden squeeze of the child's skittish hand and Quarrel could have sworn the kid hopped almost a foot in the air. His greasy head twisted up to the wiser shoplifter's voice. His big, brown, bug's eyes opened wide with lips parted in a hushed blaspheme. His right hand remaining on a ruptured orange bag of Cheetos as well as his left stuffing a dark bottle in his jacket pocket. "What are you doing?" The boy froze quicker and harder than the black ice on the streets outside of the store. As if he saw lips moving but was deafened to the words they made. Then his arm broke through the frosted fear, fumbling a hand in his pocket as the one holding the chips slowly pulled back into his person.

"Hey, asshole!" The clerk called out to the two in the back of the store. Struggling with keeping the two in his line of sight through the aisles. "You best not be havin' a taste test 'a some 'my money are you!?"

"Of course not, friend!" Quarrel called back in an ebullient voice, contrasting to the peculiar glare in the youth's direction. Back to the boy, he whispered as his mismatched shoes reentered the aisle visible to the front counter. "You're gonna get caught, kid." His head calmly wound back to the front counter as Ty's skeptical glare locked to him. With his items shoved into every hidden crevice on his clothing, Quarrel countered a homeless grin. His shopping was done, he could leave and finally bail on this façade as his fingers slipped into his pocket. All that was left were to buy his beers.

The shoplifter felt something in his pocket that gruelingly wiped the false smile clean off his stubbled face. It was a cold, crumpled reminder. Taking the form of loose change and rutted dollars. Years of lavishness and hallucinogens, lewd and a drastic corruptions alien to all worlds and beyond the abyss. Fifteen dollars and eighty-one cents, he recounted. Having done so more than twenty times before he waltzed into the store with empty dignity breezing throughout his steps. He recited it in his mind like a bad and overplayed tune, like all songs seemed to be on the radio in his ride halted outside. He clenched the remainder tight in his hand, never wanting to let it go for the rest of his life and what laid after. But here he was, standing before a cross store clerk that gave kinder looks to steaming shit on the sidewalks. Tossing away the last taste of his treasure for ten cheap beers encased in splotched and dented cardboard.

If only he had known what he would become.

Then, there was another sound behind him, it was far, but loud. A bottle had dropped and crashed on the floor. It snapped him from his trance. His hand balled with his change took a wrong slant and a shine of metal shot into the store owner's soured eye.

On the instinct, Ty furiously grabbed Mr. Quarrel's wrist. Scrapping out whatever shine was hidden in the darkness of his sleeve. He knew the man was far too poor to bear a Rolex or anything gleaming on his wrist for that trouble. And he was right, as his instinct always was to him. A pack of batteries, with plastic encasing shining bright and fresh out of the factory.

"Now that." Quarrel chortled emptily. "That's a funny story."

"Don't lie to me, you son-of-a-bitch!" Ty growled over the counter, "You were shoving my bank into your grubby pockets!" Quarrel breathed in calmly in a fabricated submission to vacantly apologize or deny the allegations. Whichever got him out of this store sooner. But Ty let go of his wrist as something caught the corner of his eye yet again. At the medicinal section of the store. Ceasing his swears and ramblings and redirected his anger towards what lurked beyond the counter. Quarrel caught that he was no longer the center of attention and sighed gruffly.

"Stupid kid." The older shoplifter rolled his eyes.

"'Ay, you!" The clerk barked. The boy blinked nervously at the call and the owner moved away from Quarrel. He ferociously swung open the latch door out of his counter and into the aisle. "You didn't pay for that either!" He crept closer and the boy retreated in a submissive gesture. His small hand crawled slowly back into one of his many pockets. Ty however, outstretched his claws furiously open at the smaller shoplifter, "Give me what you stole you snotnosed little -"

The boys hand reemerged sharply with a small weapon encased in olden leather. There was a sharp sound of metal springing from a coil in the small device. Five inches of lethal steel shot out only an inch from Ty's bulky nose, which caused him to spring back at the flicker of sudden danger. Then shrouded it hastily with resentment. "Swindlers!" The owner barked threateningly at the two, making the boy cringe in fear even more, "The whole lot 'a you bastards!"

"Ty!" Quarrel intervened, jolting between the two, separating a thick enough barrier between them. "He's only a kid," He raised his hands before the store owner to calmly ready to push back the man ready to lunge at anyone. "Let me handle this." The veteran thief then turned back to the novice. "Look, kid." He said, making a gruff attempt of speaking softly. He eased two steps to the boy, whom warily forged his hind towards the back of the shop in the same distance. Quarrel's hand only four inches away from the boy's blade. "Just give the stuff back to the nice man over here. Everything will be A-O.K."

"I'm done with this shit!" Ty shouted impatiently and flew his hands up in the air in an annoyed submission, "I'm calling the police!" The boy's heart dropped to his empty stomach and his hand shook even more at the warning. The distanced himself from Quarrel, the steps between the two thieves jumped back to five.

"Will you _please_ just allow me to fucking handle this?" Quarrel growled over his shoulder. Changing his voice a bit more nurturing back to the child, "Don't listen to him. You're not in trouble. Just. . ." His kind words gained an agonizing two steps back in. The ripped glove over his hand slowly left his pocket and gently made to the near seizuring tip of the stiletto's blade. Just one step, only inches was his hand from the metal. He moved his thumb over to the side, ghosting over by less than an inch from the child's tautened fist. "Give me the knife."

Ty jumped at the sudden growl of a shout that made the clunky wall phone leap out of his hand and crumble to the tile floor before he could dial the second digit. He turned and saw rouge had shot to the floor in a small and frantic stream. Then a flicker of a boy speeding to the other side of the aisle and through the sliding doors. Ty saw Quarrel, hunching over with his a wounded palm in his other hand. His eyes glared at the gaping slit as the red mortality hazily gushed from the opening. He growled something under his breath that Ty just barely heard, the words were muffled as a different tone sounded from his. It was dark and hateful as the reminder of feeling of a pain so small that retold him of something that cursed for as long as his endless days.

"How dare he mock me of my mortality . .?"

Ty's face wrinkled in confusion, but kept silence when it came to the comment. No matter what nonsense that was coming from the drunk's mouth, his money came first. "Hey, come back here-"

Too late, Quarrel had already shot through the door before Ty could finish his sentence. The shopkeeper quickly followed through the doors and into the icy rain and sleet. He slipped under a large patch of ice at the foot of the entrance and hit his tail on the slipping ice. His dazed eyes beheld back upward, only seeing a black shadow of Quarrel running into the ice and snow with his money and stolen items still snug in his pockets. "MY FUCKING STUFF, ASSHOLE!"

* * *

Quarrel chased the boy down through the crooked alleys and endless grids of streets. Past the large and snowed in office buildings and parking lots infected with frozen lakes. Nothing but fury heating his stomps, preventing him from gliding gracelessly along the ice. How dare he bring him a knife into his hand? A small, poor and revolting weakling of a human drive a blade into someone far more above the ranks of even their leader? To remind him when life wasn't precious, when age and mortality were nil in his mind. To retell him how that it was ripped away by embodiments carved into stone that proclaim themselves as gods? They promised power and survival among the others who perished in the genocide they themselves were forced to inflict. Though this promise was empty. Only being with desperation, regret, weakness, and sin. This was not survival in this world.

It was torture of life itself.

The boy had less luck with speeding along the frozen waters. The worn grip under his sketchers slipped on a sheet of black ice at one of the small and rusted neighborhood parks. The leg went flying into the air as his back plummeted into the ground. The back of his head collided with the sheeted concrete with a nearly break-neck snap. The knife was finally freed from his hand he his concussed body slid to a smooth wall. Tagged with murals over murals of graffiti usually used for handball in the warmer months. The larger crook slid roughly as he tried to make to a stop, his feet almost gave out as well. He stopped inches before the blade. His hand was ready to dive to the ground, but from the far edge of sight, he saw the boy crawl at a speed he only thought possible in the neighborhood rodents. His desperate scrambling got him just a centimeter from his stiletto, but Quarrel furiously stomped the cutlass under his foot. Cracking the ice beneath him and possibly the boy's fingers if they were just a millisecond closer. The boy went to pry the boot using his only tool of protection if his fingernails snapped off or his frozen fingers broke backward.

Two furious hands fisted the child's torn coat and ripped him from the ground with a horrifying ease. The boy tried to scream at the pull, but the wind knocked out of his chilled lungs as hands shoved him hard against the slick cinderblock. His toes barely scraping the ground underneath him. Quarrel's eyes darkened with unrelenting anger as his fist cocked back, ready to knock this child's head through the wall for making him loose his treasure to gain his own.

To remind him of life here meaning nothing. His worth, nothing. Lasting his hardship to another day of struggle. Each day was always a pitiless struggle.

**_Crack. .!_**

There was a sharp stench that chilled Quarrel's nostrils in such a strength, that it forced him to gaze down to his feet. He had broken something under his boot that made him instantly loose the boiling fury that quivered his fist. The sight leaving a gobsmacked freeze in its wake. Staying colder than the frozen rain drizzling his head as he gazed down at the child's trove. He was expecting luxuries, headphones, toys, anything that he could take for himself or sell. Hell, even candy would have made more sense then what he saw splaying along the ground.

What Quarrel had crushed under his foot and burned his nostrils was a bottle of Vicks. The emerald fluid seeping into the boxes of crackers, fruit, insta-ramen, and some weight gaining drinks. Speckled with splayed pill capsules from bottles that had broken form the kid's impact on his back. What he could not get over was the medicine. Ibuprofen and the sharply flavored stenches from the glass bottled treatments. So much, that he saw the boxes and bottles that lined and overflowed his cargo shorts.

Quarrel shot his eyes back up to boy's face, profoundly analyzing his features as both pairs locked immediately. His sunken face was barely a shade under the paleness of freshly dropped snow. The hollows about his large eyes deep in a dark frucia color. What should have been white in his eyes were flushed with suffering, pestilence and fear. The child's features were enough to make the thief lighten his strength on the child's shoulders and migrate a tad more comfortably to his arms.

"Why all this?" Quarrel questioned strongly motioning his noggin toward the treasure soaking rainwater on the ground. "Is someone sick? Is it your family? Your mother, perhaps?"

The novice froze at the horrifically correct guess and nodded, slowly and solemnly. Like he was headed for a funeral and she were already lying in the coffin. The man saw something far too familiar in those eyes. Hardship, sacrifice, loss. All traits that had made the man see himself in a mirror of his child form. He imagined his sister at his side. Her soft flowing violet hair and innocent pastel skin. Her eyes, a dim yellow with a hue that shared the distant store lights glistening off the icicles on the barbwire fences. Her voice still visible in his mind, as if she were right there, staring up at him with the look exact to the child before him. In the same quiet, melrose, and worrisome tone that made his heart drop whenever he was asked.

"When will be the next time we get to eat, Strife?"

How he missed his sister. If only he knew where she was.

With that thought, his mind faded back to the boy's direction. "Now you will not run." Strife warned. "Because you're very easy to catch." The boy nodded warily. Quarrel released the boy and dove into his left pocket, scraping the crumpled dollars and spare coins and frantically counted the scraps of money in his palm.

"12.94" He hissed warm, beer scented mist into the frozen air. Twelve dollars and some change, the rest must've fallen from his grasp when he was found out. He held the child's shaking hand. Handing the money into his dirty palm and made damn sure that not one cent touched the iced over concrete. He didn't let go of that palm, like he had any warmth left in his entire body to give to this small boy's frozen red fingers. "Now I don't give a damn what you do with this money that I'm giving you. Buy some beer, save some homeless, it is yours to do with as you choose. But know this." His other hand rose to his swollen red and drooling nose. The dirt layered cuticles of his forefinger inches from touching. "You don't look like a thief." Strife said bluntly. "And I know a damned thief when I see one. And you're most certainly not it. Will you prove me wrong?" It seemed that the hidden nephilim's words weren't exactly sticking with the boy. There was too much confusion riddling his headcold-ridden skull. He was too busy looking down, focusing on the money shoved into his hand. Why this strange man was giving him coinage and telling him what not to do what he has done his entire life. **"Will you prove me wrong, child?"** He urged further, the boy jumped and finally showed a flicker of attention. He instilled a sporadic nod with his bright brown eyes glinting a foggy orange from the streetlights.

He knew from that signal that he finally gotten the consideration he had yearned for. He began his instruction, pointing an also red and near frozen finger behind him. It's direction into the street leading back to the convenience store. "You're going to go back in there." The boy's chest dropped and his wounded eyes swelled, clenching the money in his hand tighter than the constriction in his chest did. His gaze dove to his feet, sobbing, shaking his head and whimpered a sniveling cry. "You're going to give that nice man the money you owe him, and you will be on your merry way to your mother, are we clear?"

The boy paused, more frozen still than the icicles draping the apartment radiators lining the square. Then his ripped shoes began to travel, sluggishly and uncertainly in each receding step, he stumbled once in the slush, but there was not one infliction in the cosmos that was going to take those soiled dollars and measly cents from his weak, diminutive clasp. He turned his torso first and his head second as he took one final look at the man of ironic generosity. Strife gave a weak smile to a boy too confused to return the same gesture. Strife turned, his boots kicking the slush and trash as he made his way back to his ride a few blocks away. The echoes of the child of man's steps jogging into the frosted concrete jungle before him. "Please prove me wrong. . ." Strife lamented as he quietly counted the boys footsteps deeper into the city. "Prove to me that there's something left in this world." He eavesdropped until as they faded, it was not long until they were no more to his hearing. ". . . Please."

* * *

Months passed. The mark of that frozen, rainy night had long melted in the sweltering heat of summer. The proof shown in the parched dandelions and crab grass popping out between the cracks in the concrete. Flowering, green vines sprawled out along the ten story apartments like Mother Nature's veins taking the city like a well needed cancer. The pigeons have already returned to the skies and fire escapes, while humans and rats left their homes on land and ventured the streets on foot. All favoring the outdoors once again.

Strife never preferred to walk the streets along with the rodents and people. He preferred his steed. A blocky and scuffed white mustang drove down the street. Its soiled paintjob, dim headlights, and cracked, tinted windows conflicting with its pristine engine, purring proudly as it veered effortlessly down the boulevard.

The car sharply braked in front of a familiar shop. The car's nose halfway over one parking space and the rear overtaking the other. The engine grumbled down to silence, or what was close to it in the big city. The driver's door opened and Strife stepped out of the vehicle in slightly cleaner clothes, a no-sleeve flannel shirt, tattered drainpipe jeans, and cloudy, discount aviators. His naturally shaped spikes of hair unaffected by gravity as he walked around the nose of the car. His hand making a long stroke along its nose, creating streaks on the thin line of yellow pollen and dirt.

"I know, girl." Strife muttered sweetly over his shoulder to his beloved stallion. "When I get the money, 'fix you up nice n' new."

He hated parting from that friend of his. But not as much as what he was going to do next.

"Well, if it isn't Mr. Quarrel?" Ty greeted hollowly from behind the counter. Who now understood his previous mistakes in security and had his television routed to an actual surveillance camera. Along with a new metal barrier dividing the counter. Fencing Ty off from the Nephilim or any other knife wielding customer for that matter.

"Hey, Ty!" Strife pulled back his sunglasses up into his hair, showing his grinning neon hazel eyes. "For a second there, I thought you'd forget my name."

"Think I'd tune out you or your trouble _you_ caused? How I busted my ass chasing for my money _you_ stole? Or when I had to mop up blood from my floor right after?"

Strife gave out a simpered laugh, acknowledging the newly installed barricade. "Missed me, didn't yeah? Ha, I'm flattered, truly." Ty rolled his eyes with a distempered groan. "Don't worry, old man." Strife motioned his scuffed driving gloves to his thin, under-pocketed clothes. "I would've worn some more layers. Too hot to rob you today."

"I'm relieved." The shop owner grunted. "Now, since I know you never have a drop of cash on yeah, you'd be smart to get the fuck out my store."

"For creation's sake, I only came here to chat with an old friend." Strife whined, moving a bit closer to the now barricaded front counter.

"Fine then, why are you really uglying up my day with that mug of yours?"

Quarrel's face became more serious, more honest. He stepped to the register and placed his hands on the counter, hunching himself over slightly. Ty leaned an inch or two backward uncomfortable, his hand on the other side. His forefinger one press away from the recently installed button underneath that would bring the authorities charging in with one touch.

"The boy that night," Quarrel spoke, "the one that stuck you up and stabbed my hand."

"Yeah, didn't forget him either." Ty spat offensively, "You take me as some geezer with full blown alzheimers. I ain't that old, you insulting prick."

"People have different maturities to what they have really experienced." Strife shrugged, recalling his own great age compared to the mortal's, "but never mind that. That boy never came back, did he?"

"That little sewer rat?" Ty chortled to cover some uneasiness. "Hell no! And a good riddance if yeah ask me." At that moment, a dimmed light bulb glinted a sudden realization in Ty's skull. "Was he supposed to?"

Strife looked away with a strange look on his face. One of his leather-layered fists constricted audibly on the countertop. The other slowly dove into his pants pocket. Ty's fidgeting finger was brought closer to the alarm. "Pack of diamonds, please." The mustang rider said shortly. Scraping out a few tattered green notes and placed it before a small metal gate. Ty nodded relieved, his hand released the counter and turned to the large assortment of smokes, lottery tickets, and contraception behind him.

"Hey, Quarrel?" The owner began again to Strife, whom caught the sweat lightly fogged the surface on the opposite fence.

"Yeah?"

"When that boy stabbed you, you were just standing there. Staring at your own blood pour. . ." He plucked the small, brown box of cigarettes from the wall. "You said something."

"Probably nothing." Strife's argument was short and cold.

"Ah, but you did. 'Said something along the lines of uh. . ." He opened the barriers small gate between them, he accidently struck an unnerving eye contact. Seeing the dark sureness in his customer's eyes, probably persuasion that there was not a damned thing that was said. Though, he still prodded anyway. "Reminding you of your mortality?"

Strife did nothing but return his kindly grin, but did not move his forward stance. "You know how one is when they were as sodded as me that night." Strife laughed, casting his shades down from his forehead. "We all think we're immortal at that many drinks!"

Ty raised his eyebrows and pushed out his lip in an admitted agreement. "Yeah, you were acting like a smashed idiot." He opened the gate, quickly made the exchange, and clamped it shut.

With a thankful nod, Strife stepped out of the store and into the street. He whipped out a near gasless lighter out of his pocket. After a few flicks with his thumb on the worn flint, it lit. He then took in a much needed puff of smoke and dropped himself into his driver seat. He pulled out of the spot without checking his mirrors and with a few aggressive honks behind him, he sped away. Though, unfortunately, not for as long as he would like.

Only a few blocks down, he had gotten stuck behind a large and packed school bus. Trudging dreadfully slow down the block. It stopped, the small stop sign creeped from the driver window as it prepared to make it's pick up at a local Boys and Girl's Club east of them. He groaned, cursing to himself. Why in the nine hells was there a damned bus wrecking traffic in the middle of July?

A bunch of small boys in strange uniforms loaded onto the yellow bus, like cattle into a cart behind schedule to the slaughter house. Attiring button downs and neck scarves littered with different strange buttons and badges on each child. Such idiotic outfits, he taunted. He watched the last boy climb into the bus, whom turned and poked his blonde head back through the sliding door. "Come on, Hunter!" He called impatiently.

"Coming!" The final scout trotted across the street. Strife blinked and raised his glasses. His eyebrows raised, it was him.

Sporting the same uniform as the others packed into the truck. With cleaner hair and sickness riddling less of his eyes, was the young thief he knew in the dead of winter. He climbed into the bus with the other children, baring a smile that Strife nearly believed to be unfathomable on the most lost soul he may have ever known.

He sighed, knocking his glasses back onto the pointed bridge of his nose. He turned into the next street connected to the highway and sped into the interstate. He grinned quietly as he drove out towards nowhere as he always had. With not one dime in his pocket and not the slightest clue on where to trip to next, he smiled. Not knowing where the rode will take him next. But at least he knew, for just that one moment in his lifetime. That in not the way he expected. At least he knew of one thing. That boy is safe. That _Hunter_ was safe. And some of his faith in humanity remained.

The fallen demigod tested the name on his tongue for the first and final time. Memorizing him for probably eons to come.

"Hunter, eh?"

* * *

_**Yeah, so the headcanon I made about Hunter. (If you don't know him, look up the Darksiders DLC) Hunter was a very poor inner city kid with a drug ridden mother to a point that she was very sick and Hunter was forced to care/steal for her. He got a lot of his scavenging skills from living in this background. His mother eventually passes away and is then taken in by a more nurturing family who eventually send him away to boy scouts where he eventually becomes more of a survivalist. Where he finds out he's amazing at living in the wild/ harsh environments. Thus, making him a key survivor in the apocalypse.**_

_**My depiction of Strife may seem to be slightly off. But there is a very good chance I may make another chapter in the future that explains why he is like this. Or at least show him to be more of the D- hole you all know and love.**_

_**But this is a good change though, right? I see too many shippy fics in this fandom which isn't terrible. I just wanted to put in some more variety into the mix and I hope there are others that feel the same as I do.**_

_**Once again, reviews are always appreciated and I will respond the best I can. Or at least, If I can c:**_

_**Bye for now!**_

_**~Alex**_


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